Jack of All Trades
by Della-Avril
Summary: Sakura Haruno Uchiha is the ultimate multi-tasker: mother, Head Medic, advisor to the Sixth, diplomat. And now, apparently thanks to the Post Fourth Great War Baby Boom, sensei. [Sakura Centric]


Disclaimer: Never owned Naruto, and probably never will. ;)

"Jack of All Trades"

I.

By the time Sarada was eight years old, Uchiha Sakura had found herself to have fallen into the bad habit of waking up at around 4:45 AM on the weekdays instead of 4:30. This was mainly due to the fact that when her alarm rang at 4:30, her sleep-drunk mind never failed to remind her that if she substituted breakfast with her homemade nutrition balls, she could afford to sleep for another 15 minutes. Ever since Naruto had assured her that the nutrition ball recipe was now "almost not as bad as rations," she always chose the extra sleep.

After managing to pull herself out of bed at 4:45, Sakura went to the bathroom, dressed in her training clothes, drank a glass of water, ate a nutrition ball, and locked herself in the family dojo-turned-study by 5:00 AM. It was there that she meditated and brushed up on some light reading, which included something like the newest issue of the Shizen medical journal or a new textbook. She usually studied until 6:00 AM, when she left to shower and get dressed for the day.

At 6:30 AM Sakura usually started on Sarada's (nutritionally balanced) breakfast and bento, and by 7:00 AM went to wake up her daughter for the Academy. By 7:30 Sarada was usually finished with breakfast and Sakura had eaten another two nutrition balls, and by 7:35 Sakura would be on her way to drop Sarada off at Academy before starting her day shift at the hospital at 8:00 AM. She'd made it clear that she wouldn't be pulling all-nighters while raising her daughter when Kakashi offered her the position of Head Medical Ninja after Shizune went into kekkai-genkai research, and so far the hospital staff had been pretty good about honoring that (which was admittedly expected when you were known to punch holes in walls when irritated.)

Unless there was some serious freak accident, a high-stakes surgery, the discovery of a new contagious disease, or Kakashi was due for a check up, Sakura usually managed to get out of the hospital around 2:30. On those wonderful, albeit seldom days, Sakura tried to swing by the market to pick up some things for dinner and drop them off at home before taking off to Hokage Tower. Because of her former position as Tsunade's apprentice, special medic nin jonin status, contributions to the war, and apparent title as Kakashi's "least insane student ever," Sakura had become something of an unofficial advisor to the Sixth.

Kakashi and Shikamaru usually kept her occupied in those meetings until 5:00. That gave her just enough time to beat Sarada home, who after spending the afternoon with the lovely, understanding, and beautiful Yamanaka family, was dropped off by either Sai or Ino at around 5:15. Sakura usually got around to starting dinner at 5:30 and had it finished by 6:00-6:30, so it was when she and Sarada were clearing the table at 7:00 that Pakkun interrupted her schedule with a summons.

"Good evening, Sakura-chan," Pakkun intoned after popping right on the windowsill above the sink, causing Sarada to drop the ceramic plate she'd been drying, "Sarada-chan."

Sarada looked from the broken dish on the floor to Pakkun, back to the dish, and scowled.

"Hello, Pakkun." Sakura smiled while trying to telepathically will Pakkun to say he was only there for their dinner leftovers, and not to give her a summons for a mission. But since she'd made tomato onigiri that night, Sakura kind of doubted he was here for the former.

Please no missions,

Please no missions,

Please no missions,

Please no missions,

"I think the Sixth has some sort of mission for you."

Dang it. Fudging Kakashi-sensei.

She hadn't said a real curse word since Sarada was born, and by now the baby-proofed curses were ingrained in her vocabulary.

"But," Pakkun paused, as if noticing the agitated look on her face for the first time, "I don't think it's too bad."

Sakura still wasn't smiling. In the background, a huge series of loud crashes followed by a shrill squeak sounded from the closet in the hallway where Sarada was looking for the broom and dustpan.

"Oh come on, if you go I'll let you touch the pad of my paw." He held it up with a doggy smile, and Sakura had to admit that she was a little surprised to find that it was still baby pink after all this time. "They're really soft and supple, you know."

"Can I touch it, too?" Sarada piped in, dragging the top of a broom that was taller than her over the tatami flooring of the kitchen. Sakura bit her lip to keep her smile.

"Sarada, flip the broom the other way, dear, you're scratching the floor. And," Sakura's smile faded when she turned back to Pakkun, "how long is this going to take? This is one of my first evenings off in awhile."

Although she and Ino had handed off the running of the children's mental health clinic to one of Sakura's subordinates several years ago, they still found themselves heavily consulted. She and Ino usually switched off on watching Inojin and Sarada while the other attended one of the tri-weekly board meetings, which could go anywhere from 7:00-10:00 at night depending on the situation. The war had certainly destroyed families more than it had strengthened them, and the necessity of the clinic had only multiplied as the years went on.

"Ma, ma, Sarada-chan, you have to earn that privilege." Pakkun replied before turning back to Sakura. "Not too long. I could even stay and watch Sarada-chan, if you'd like."

"Pakkun, please let me touch it! Mama made teriyaki steak last night~"

"Thanks, Pakkun, but she'll be coming with me!" Sakura grinned, resolutely ignoring Sarada's groans of protest in the background.

It wasn't uncommon for single-parent shinobi to bring their young children with them to stand outside the Hokage's office while their parent was debriefed, though most of her colleagues would certainly label Sarada as old enough to stay at home by herself for an hour or two. But when your daughter was the more vulnerable of the only two known wielders of an infamous kekkai-genkai and had been the victim of more than six kidnapping attempts by age eight, you tended to be a bit more protective.

Pakkun shook his little head, and Sarada accidentally cracked the stick of the broom in half.

A lot more protective, actually. They'd started working on defense and strength training when Sarada was three.

"Sarada, what did I say about practicing chakra-infused strength in the house?" Sakura crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at the broom. She really hoped this wasn't turning into a "thing" - Sarada had already accidentally broken three doorknobs, shattered a window after closing it, and taken a door off its hinges after slamming it too hard.

"Sorry, Mama… I didn't mean it…"

Sarada sighed and looked down at the broken broom in her hands, and then at the broken plate on the floor. While her little nose scrunched up and her shiny little eyes narrowed behind her little red glasses, she just looked so dejected and disappointed and cute! Sakura had to cover her mouth with her hand to hide her smile.

"Oh, that's all right. Now, let's go see what jii-chan wants!" Sakura laughed before giving Pakkun a scratch behind the ears. Pakkun nodded and poofed out, startling Sarada again. Sakura could only laugh at the embarrassed blush that fanned her daughter's face.

"Well, we better get going. Don't want to keep Hokage-sama waiting, right?" Sakura made toward the front door with Sarada trailing behind her, the broken broom and plate left forgotten on the scratched tatami floor.

"But Mama, didn't you say that Hokage-sama is never on time?" Sarada asked once they were outside and Sakura had locked the front door and activated the security seals, which were surprisingly necessary. Sakura would never understand why some ninja actually thought breaking in to the home of two sannin and their daughter made for a good plan, but apparently that was just her.

Maybe they thought Sasuke had written down the secrets of the Sharingan in Sarada's baby book? Who knew.

"And that's why we're walking the long way!" Sakura laughed, grabbing Sarada's hand. "Besides, I love taking walks and spending time with my favorite girl. The longer we take, the better!"

"Moooomm…" Sarada whined, though she didn't try to pull her hand away from her mother's.

Sakura hummed and lead the way through the market district on their way to the Tower, pointing out where the Uchiha district used to be before Pein's Invasion. The district had been razed in the attack and rebuilt as a new civilian neighborhood, the faded paint of the Uchiha crests on the surviving outer walls the only reminders of the past. Sarada always had a sort of misty look in her eyes when they passed it, and it was the same look she wore when Sakura had first explained the meaning of the crests she sewed on the backs of all their shirts. It was a look that differed little from the one Sarada wore when they spoke of Sasuke.

Sakura quickly pointed out something else, successfully distracting her daughter for the time being. Sakura was getting to the point where she'd told Sarada almost every G-rated detail of her clan, and had been actively trying to avoid peaking Sarada's curiosity on the subject. The dark history of the Uchiha was something she'd wanted to leave to Sasuke, but now that Sarada was getting older Sakura feared it was only a matter of time before Sarada would learn it from an outside source. She could only imagine how well that would play over.

The very thought was enough to remind her to remind Kakashi to remind Sasuke to get his ass back home, at least for a little while. For the sake of the world or not, Sarada needed a flesh-and-blood father, and not just a picture of one.

The rest of the tip was uneventful, and Sakura sat Sarada down on the wooden bench outside the office. With a wave and a smile to the chunin on guard, Sakura slipped inside and was surprised to see a pretty big crowd of other jonin. Almost all the Rookie 9, excepting Shino, Naruto, Sai, and Sasuke were present, alongside other long-time jonin like Kurenai-sensei and Genma-san. She spotted Ino near the Sixth's desk and moved through the crowd, smiling and nodding to all the familiar faces she saw.

"What," Ino huffed once Sakura stood next to her, "are we planning an invasion or something?"

Sakura laughed, looking from the crowd of jonin to Ino. "Hopefully not. Although there are enough of us for it."

"Ah, Ino-san, Sakura-chan," Kakashi looked up from his novel, "don't worry, this is a very important matter. So important and necessary that you probably aren't going to like me very much for assigning it." The room started to quiet down once Kakashi began to speak.

"By the way Sakura-chan, is Sarada-chan outside?"

Sakura blinked. "Yes…"

Kakashi's eye crinkled in a smile and he formed a quick hand seal. Not a second later there was a short scream and a lot of barking outside the office.

"Pakkun seems to have taken a real liking to her. He mentioned something about his paws - that's a good sign."

"That troublesome dog." Shikamaru sighed as he made his way up to Kakashi's desk from the back of the room, carrying a two foot stack of folders with sealed mission scrolls balanced precariously on top. Sakura had to wonder if he was using his shadow manipulation jutsu to keep them in place.

Once Shikamaru had quietly set the large stack on Kakashi's table and disappeared back into the crowd, Kakashi cleared his throat and began the meeting.

"Now then," He began, folding his hands front of him on the desk. His hat and cloak were haphazardly hung over the corner of his chair, and sometimes Sakura still found it a little odd to see Kakashi behind that desk instead of her shishou. Aside from a few pictures here and there, he really hadn't changed the office around that much.

"As I'm sure you're all well aware, Konoha experienced a baby boom at the end of the War. In fact, most of you have already had your own children, and some of you have even adopted a few more." Kakashi's eyes were still crinkled. "I see a bright future in our next generation."

There were several words and grunts of agreement from the gathered ninja.

"That being said, as the War indirectly brought us children, it also directly stole many of our most skilled ninja."

Oh no. Sakura could see where this was going.

"The jonin instructor is imperative to the genin three-man cell. While I understand that almost all of you have already been overburdened by family and other responsibilities, the fact that not enough of our chunin have graduated to jonin to serve this year's number of eligible genin is not something I can control." He paused, sighing. "And I will not promote inexperienced chunin to jonin status simply to tutor other inexperienced ninja. This peace is fragile, and we must train our children as hard as we were trained - though, perhaps excluding a few of the more traumatic parts."

The room was silent.

"I'm sure we all know where this is going, and I'm also sure it's not what all of you were hoping to hear. Sorry about that in advance." His eyes were still crinkled. "Even though most of you are specialized jonin or haven't been out in the field for awhile, in this time of peace I am assigning you each a genin team to mentor. You will be missed, but no one will die because of your absence. I will ask each of your departments to cut back on excessive workloads, and to forgive any missed shifts."

Sakura's mind went blank for a moment. A… genin team? While she took care of Sarada? And oversaw the other medics? And the clinic? And Kakashi? Scenarios and new timetables grew rapidly in her head like spiderwebs.

"Any questions?" Kakashi's tone was still to bright.

"No, Hokage-sama!" Was the assembly's answer.

Kakashi nodded. "Good. Shikamaru will send out your genins' files later tonight. The graduation ceremony, and the day you will meet your teams, is in three days. Dismissed."

A majority of them used a transportation to leave the office at that point, and the rest slowly filed out in small groups talking amongst themselves. Sakura hung back by Kakashi's desk after assuring Ino she wouldn't be long and no, she didn't have to take Sarada home for her. Eventually Shikamaru left with half the stack of files to do who-knew-what-with, and Sakura and Kakashi were alone.

"How can I help you, Sakura-chan?" His voice was oh-so innocent, as if he hadn't just sprung this on her without telling her this afternoon at their meeting.

"Kakashi-sensei, why?" She sighed, taking the lack of other ninja present to speak to her sensei as if they were sitting down at Ichiraku's.

His face softened, and he sighed himself before leaning back in his chair. The white Hokage hat fell off and on the floor.

"You know I wouldn't ask this of you, Sakura, if we had any other options. The Chunin aren't ready this year, although I'm sure a majority of them will be next year. Since we haven't discovered a plot for world destruction this year, I'd like to give the Chunin another year to mature their skills before they start teaching them to genin. Don't think this will become an annual thing - I know how much you already do now." He really was being sympathetic. Sakura shook her head.

"Kakashi-sensi, I already don't spend enough time with Sarada. What with the hospital, the clinic, and helping you and Shikamaru… I'll only be able to see her in the mornings, and then have to rely on Ino and Naruto to look after her in the afternoons, and they're already so busy… I mean, how could I properly teach three genuine when I can barely stay on top of my own child's life?"

She was married, but was she essentially a single mom. She couldn't remember the last time Sasuke had stuck around for more than a week at a time. But even then he was usually wrapped up in training or confidential meetings with Kakashi and Naruto, never mind that he had a wife and daughter.

Kakashi nodded, guilt starting to overcome him. He'd known Sakura had been doing a lot, but he hadn't realized just how much it had started to affect her family. It was unforgivable how closely he'd come to work with his former student, yet how little he'd known about her suffering. He unconsciously felt a little more excited for Naruto's upcoming coronation ceremony next year - he was starting to get a little too old for all this life-consuming responsibility.

"Sakura, we'll cut your hospital time in half and tell the clinic to stop relying on you and Ino for every small decision. Shikamaru and I will be fine if you only come in twice a week or so, and I'm sure everyone understands just how difficult your situation is." Because really, after everything she'd done and given up, she deserved to be able to sit down at night with her family for at least a little while and be happy.

She nodded, not meeting his gaze, and turned to leave.

"However," Kakashi's voice made her pause, "somehow I think this isn't just about being assigned a genin team."

It was true. Sakura spun on her heel, suddenly meeting his eyes with a fire he hadn't seen in a long time. Something in his heart clenched.

"You need to tell him to come home." Her voice was hoarse, but still retained its underlying strength. "Or at least more than he's been doing. This isn't how a family is supposed to work, this isn't fair to Sarada or to me. The world will not implode if he just stayed with us for one month out of the year!"

"I know. I know and I'm sorry." It was all he could say.

Sakura looked away, biting her lip. "And I know that's he's one of the reasons why we've been able to stay at peace for so long, and that his missions are important in keeping Konoha safe… But his family should be just as important, even more important to him than the village. Sarada's getting older and she's starting to ask questions that I can't answer." She shook her head, angry tears starting to fill her eyes.

"What happens when Sarada learns about the founders in class and asks who Madara Uchiha is, and why I've never told her about him or her clan other than her grandparents' first names? What happens when she awakens her Sharingan and there's no one to teach her how to use it? What happens when she just gets too curious and tired of waiting and starts reading up on her clan and learns of the past? Without me or Sasuke telling her about it?" She could just picture it, the possibility was too realistic. Sarada sitting in the library alone, reading old newspaper articles about the massacre, about Itachi's exploits in the Akatsuki, about Sasuke's own time with the Akatsuki…

Kakashi didn't say anything. He wasn't sure that he had the answers, and it made him suddenly sick with guilt.

"So he has to come home, Kakashi. He has to a make an effort. I'm her mother, but there's only so much I can do for her when it comes to her ancestry. There's so much to the Uchiha Clan that I don't know, because Sasuke has refused to tell me and I respected that. But Sarada deserves to know about where she's come from and why people she doesn't know will recognize the crest on her back. She deserves to know why some people were named her enemies - and her allies - before she was even born." Sakura's clenched fists were white, and she stole a glance at the door as if she could see her daughter through it.

"For eight years I've waited for Sasuke to speak to her about his family out of respect for him, but he hasn't even told her what his brother's - her uncle's - name was." She grit her teeth, hating herself for showing so much emotion, even if it was just to Kakashi. "But damn it, Kakashi-sensei, she deserves better than that!"

Her breathing was erratic, and she couldn't stop the slow tears that trailed down her cheeks. Kakashi looked at her sadly, and for a moment she knew exactly what he'd thought at the end of that sentence. And damn it, Sakura knew she deserved better, too.

"Well, Sakura, you are the Uchiha Clan matriarch, after all." Kakashi's voice broke through the tense silence after a moment.

Sakura blinked, as if hearing the term for the first time. Sure, she'd carried the last name Uchiha all this time and wore the crest on her back, but she'd never truly thought of herself as an actual Uchiha, let alone its matriarch. The word had never even crossed her train of thought, but then that's technically what she was as the Last Uchiha's wife, wasn't it?

"When I was child and on a team with… Obito, he'd whine about clan life almost every day. The Uchiha weren't especially progressive, and the responsibility of leading the clan always fell on the sons of the main house. Never the daughters. From what I remember, the women almost always left shinobi life once they were married, but then those women were also usually chunin or jonin by that point."

Sakura visibly deflated. "So I'm a bad mother by my standards and traditional Uchiha clan standards?" She laughed a bit too bitterly.

Kakashi immediately began waving his hands and shaking his heads comically fast. "What? Oh, no, Sakura-chan, I didn't mean it like that! I didn't finish! The Uchiha women were still warriors. If the compound was attacked, the women were voluntarily the first lines of defense. If they were alive today, the Uchiha women would have nothing but respect for the great things you do and how much you love and sacrifice for Sarada."

She sighed and looked away, trying to covertly wipe away a stray tear. The tile was still that awful shade of brown from her shishou's era, sake stains and all.

"Sakura-chan?"

"I…" She shook her head. "Kakashi-sensei, I just want Sarada to grow up to be happy, and strong, and healthy. If I could trade my own health and happiness just to ensure hers, I would. But what Sarada really needs right now is a father, and I can't give that to her." Sakura paused, taking a deep, shaky breath.

"Sakura." She looked up. Kakashi was standing up from his desk and making his way toward her. He stopped when he finally reached her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked at it, then at him, and couldn't help but smile.

"Sakura, whatever mission you do or don't take up, whatever Sasuke does or doesn't do, Sarada will always be supported by a dedicated and loving mother. She'll always have you to look out for her, to love her, to teach her the Will of Fire, and that's what matters."

Sakura bit back a fresh slew of tears. "Wow, Kakashi-sensei, I didn't know you could be so sentimental."

Kakashi took his hand away and laughed, before scratching the back of his head. "Yeah, I guess I'm full of surprises, huh?"

Sakura smiled.

* * *

{A/N:}

So I'm taking a few liberties with the timeline here. Sarada is eight and too young to graduate the Academy, just like all the other kids of the Rookie 9, so don't expect to see any of their kids placed on Sakura's team. This also takes place just a year before Naruto's coronation.

This is basically going to be a slice-of-life, Sakura-centric fic. I'm not sure if it'll end up as SasuSaku or something else, or even if there will be a pairing at all!

I'm essentially writing this is procrastinate on writing my other fic, haha.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this story so far.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to review.

Until next time,

Della


End file.
